The Internet Tough Guy is a feature in all Internet social forums. These are people who poison discussions with anger, hatred, and threats. Some are malicious. Some are crazy. Some are just afflicted with a rotten sense of humor. Whatever their motives, they're a scourge. It takes precious little trolling to sour a message-board. A "troll" -- someone who comes onto an online community looking to pick fights -- has two victory conditions: Either everyone ends up talking about him, or no one talks at all. And where two or more trolls gather, they'll egg each other on, seeing who can anger and disrupt the regular message-board posters the most. It can be distressing. If you're part of a nice little community of hamster-fanciers, Trekkers, or Volkswagen enthusiasts, it's easy to slip into a kind of camaraderie, a social setting in which everyone talks about life, aspirations, family problems, personal triumphs. In some ways, it doesn't matter what brought you together -- the fact that you're together is what matters. Then, almost without warning, your community goes toxic. Someone in your group undergoes a radical personality shift and begins picking fights, or someone new comes to the party with an agenda. Or, worst of all: Your little clubhouse achieves some small measure of fame and is overrun by newcomers who don't know that Liza is a little bit touchy on the subject of hamster balls, or that old Fred gets into a froth anytime someone asks about retrofitting a bud vase into a vintage Beetle, or that everyone here actually kind of knows Wil Wheaton from reading his blog and he's a total mensch, so jokes about shoving Wesley out the airlock are frowned upon.

Th Intrnt Tough Guy is a fatur in all Intrnt social forums. Ths ar popl who poison discussions with angr, hatrd, and thrats. Som ar malicious. Som ar crazy. Som ar just afflictd with a rottn sns of humor. Whatvr thir motivs, thy'r a scourg. It taks prcious littl trolling to sour a mssag-board. A "troll" -- somon who coms onto an onlin community looking to pick fights -- has two victory conditions: Eithr vryon nds up talking about him, or no on talks at all. And whr two or mor trolls gathr, thy'll gg ach othr on, sing who can angr and disrupt th rgular mssag-board postrs th most.

It can b distrssing. If you'r part of a nic littl community of hamstr-fancirs, Trkkrs, or Volkswagn nthusiasts, it's asy to slip into a kind of camaradri, a social stting in which vryon talks about lif, aspirations, family problms, prsonal triumphs. In som ways, it dosn't mattr what brought you togthr -- th fact that you'r togthr is what mattrs.

Thn, almost without warning, your community gos toxic. Somon in your group undrgos a radical prsonality shift and bgins picking fights, or somon nw coms to th party with an agnda. Or, worst of all: Your littl clubhous achivs som small masur of fam and is ovrrun by nwcomrs who don't know that Liza is a littl bit touchy on th subjct of hamstr balls, or that old Frd gts into a froth anytim somon asks about rtrofitting a bud vas into a vintag Btl, or that vryon hr actually kind of knows Wil Whaton from rading his blog and h's a total mnsch, so joks about shoving Wsly out th airlock ar frownd upon.

In xtrm cass, you nd up with th kind of notorious mss that Kathy Sirra found hrslf in, in which trolls dirctd such bilious, thratning nois towards a harmlss advocat for "passionat usrs" in wb-applications that sh withdrw from spaking at O'Rilly's Emrging Tch confrnc.

You can dal with trolls in many ways. Many trolls ar prfctly nic in ral lif -- somtims, just calling thm on th phon and confronting thm with th human bing at th othr nd of thir attacks is nough to sobr thm up. But it dosn't always work: I rmmbr on tim I challngd somon who'd bn snding m hat mail to call m up and say th words aloud: th phon rang a momnt latr and th first words out of my troll's mouth wr, "You f*cking hypocrit!" Th convrsation dclind from thr.

Making th group smallr is asy in thory, hard in practic: just choos a bunch of popl who arn't allowd in th discussion anymor and sction thm off from th group. Split. Or just don't lt th groups gt too big in th first plac by limiting who can talk to whom. This was Frindstr's stratgy, whr your ability to chat with anyon ls was limitd by whthr that prson was your frind or your frind's frind. Usrs rvoltd, crating "fakstrs" lik "Nw York City," whom thy could bfrind, forming ad-hoc affinity groups. Frindstr rtaliatd by killing th fakstrs, and a full scal rvolt nsud.

Sprading th group apart is a littl asir, with th right tchnology. Joshua Schachtr, foundr of dl.icio.us, tlls m that h onc curd a mailing-list of its flam-wars by insrting a tn-minut dlay btwn mssags bing snt to th list and thir dlivry. Th dlay was nough to allow tmprs to cool btwn mssags. A similar stratgy is to rquir you to prviw your post bfor publishing it. Digg allows you to rtract your mssags for a minut or two aftr you post thm.

I'm not sur why this is, but I suspct that it's bcaus thr's somthing fundamntally unfrindly about a roundtabl whr th participants ar xplicitly askd to participat in activ, public, quantitativ rating of on's prs. Lik on of thos xprimntal 1970s communs whr vryon has to tll vryon ls th absolut truth all th tim ("Your laugh irritats m," "You hav a fat rar nd that I find unappaling"), this dos a good job of gtting all th cards on th tabl, but is lss succssful at inspiring an atmosphr of chumminss.

Thn thr's th psychological ffct of trolling: For a crtain kind of prson (guilty as chargd), flams ar narly impossibl to lt go of. I gt tons of lovly fan mail from popl who want m to know how much thy likd my books. I lov ths nots and writ short, polit, thank-you lttrs back to ach prson. But th mmoris of ths valntins fads quickly. Not so th ill-considrd, psudonymous rant from somon who's convincd that I'm on th tak, or who has som half-bakd thory about copyright, or who wants to say insulting things about my family, frinds, intrsts or habits.

Thos popl command my full attntion. Many's th tim I'v found myslf nglcting a warm bd, a hot mal, or a chanc to go out for a cup of coff with a frind in ordr to answr som man-spiritd not from som 16-yar-old mouth-brathr who achivs transcndnc only through pointlss dbat with strangrs. For many of us, our psych dmands that ths insults b mt and ovrcom.

I am, by my natur, a scrappr. I com from a family of dbatrs, and my job for svral yars has bn to win dbats ovr copyright and digital frdom. I think that many tchnology dsignrs ar of a similar bnt: Argumntativ and boistrous, hard-prssd to back away from vn a pointlss fight. And it is ths popl who oftn nd up dsigning our tool-suits for onlin communitis. W viw ourslvs as lockd in an arms-rac with trolls who sk to ovrcom our dfnss.

Howvr -- and thankfully -- many community convnrs ar of a mor amicabl bnt. Although thy'r not tchnically capabl of writing thir own mssag-board tools, thy ar socially qualifid to wild thm.

Trsa is a troll-whisprr. For som rason, sh can spot irrdmabl trolls and sparat thm from th mrly unsocializd. Sh can kp discussions calm and moving forward. Sh knows whn dlting a troll's mssag will discourag him, and whn it will only spark a gam of whack-a-mol.

Trsa calls it "having an ar for txt" and sh is full of maddningly unquantifiabl tips for spotting th right rod to twiddl to kp th ractor firing happily without sparking a mltdown.

O'Rilly built his mpir by doing somthing incrdibly smart: Watching what gks did that workd and writing it down so that othr popl could do it too. H is a distillr of Intrnt wisdom, and it's that approach that is calld for hr.

If you want to fight trolling, don't mak up a bunch of a priori assumptions about what will or won't discourag trolls. Instad, sk out th troll whisprr and study thir tchniqus.

Troll whisprrs arn't ncssarily vry good at hacking tools, so thr's always an opportunity for gk synrgy in hlping thm to automat thir hand-craftd tchniqus, giving thm a softwar forc-multiplir for thir good sns. For xampl, Trsa invntd a tchniqu calld dismvowlling -- rmoving th vowls from som or all of a firy mssag-board post. Th advantag of this is that it lavs th words intact, but rquirs that you rad thm vry slowly -- so slowly that it taks th sting out of thm. And, as Trsa rcntly xplaind to m, dismvowlling part of a post lts th rst of th community know what kind of sntimnt is and is not socially accptabl.

But thr arn't nough Trsas to go around: how do w kp all th othr mssag-boards troll-fr? Again, th scrt is in obsrving th troll whisprr in th fild, looking for tchniqus that can b ncapsulatd in tutorials and cod. Thr is a walth of troll whisprr lor that isn't pur intuition and good sns, tchniqus that can b turnd into tools for th rst of us to us.

A frind who's activ on th Wikipdia community onc summd up hr approach to lif: "Don't lt asshols rnt spac in your had." That is, don't lt th jrks who crash your community turn it into a csspool. It's asir said than don, though.

Assisting th troll whisprrs and larning from thm rcognizs that most of us want a civil discussion, and giv us th tools to rpl trolls. Instad of implying that w all lack civility, ths tchniqus rcogniz our good will and hlp us solv th hard social problms of kping th pathological prsonalitis rnting spac in our hads.

Editor's Not: What do you think? How can you prvnt trolls from taking ovr onlin communitis? Lav a mssag on th InformationWk Blog and lt us know.

PCOL serves half millionPCOL's readership for April exceeded 525,000 visitors - a 50% increase over last year. This year also saw the advent of a new web site: Peace Corps News that together with the Peace Corps Library and History of the Peace Corps serve 17,000 RPCVs, Staff, and Friends of the Peace Corps every day. Thanks for making PCOL your source of news for the Peace Corps community. Read more.

Suspect confesses in murder of PCVSearch parties in the Philippines discovered the body of Peace Corps Volunteer Julia Campbell near Barangay Batad, Banaue town on April 17. Director Tschetter expressed his sorrow at learning the news. “Julia was a proud member of the Peace Corps family, and she contributed greatly to the lives of Filipino citizens in Donsol, Sorsogon, where she served,” he said. Latest: Suspect Juan Duntugan admits to killing Campbell. Leave your thoughts and condolences .

Warren Wiggins: Architect of the Peace CorpsWarren Wiggins, who died at 84 on April 13, became one of the architects of the Peace Corps in 1961 when his paper, "A Towering Task," landed in the lap of Sargent Shriver, just as Shriver was trying to figure out how to turn the Peace Corps into a working federal department. Shriver was electrified by the treatise, which urged the agency to act boldly. Read Mr. Wiggins' obituary and biography, take an opportunity to read the original document that shaped the Peace Corps' mission, and read John Coyne's special issue commemorating "A Towering Task."

Chris Dodd's Vision for the Peace CorpsSenator Chris Dodd (RPCV Dominican Republic) spoke at the ceremony for this year's Shriver Award and elaborated on issues he raised at Ron Tschetter's hearings. Dodd plans to introduce legislation that may include: setting aside a portion of Peace Corps' budget as seed money for demonstration projects and third goal activities (after adjusting the annual budget upward to accommodate the added expense), more volunteer input into Peace Corps operations, removing medical, healthcare and tax impediments that discourage older volunteers, providing more transparency in the medical screening and appeals process, a more comprehensive health safety net for recently-returned volunteers, and authorizing volunteers to accept, under certain circumstances, private donations to support their development projects. He plans to circulate draft legislation for review to members of the Peace Corps community and welcomes RPCV comments.

He served with honorOne year ago, Staff Sgt. Robert J. Paul (RPCV Kenya) carried on an ongoing dialog on this website on the military and the peace corps and his role as a member of a Civil Affairs Team in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have just received a report that Sargeant Paul has been killed by a car bomb in Kabul. Words cannot express our feeling of loss for this tremendous injury to the entire RPCV community. Most of us didn't know him personally but we knew him from his words. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends. He was one of ours and he served with honor.

Peace Corps' Screening and Medical ClearanceThe purpose of Peace Corps' screening and medical clearance process is to ensure safe accommodation for applicants and minimize undue risk exposure for volunteers to allow PCVS to complete their service without compromising their entry health status. To further these goals, PCOL has obtained a copy of the Peace Corps Screening Guidelines Manual through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and has posted it in the "Peace Corps Library." Applicants and Medical Professionals (especially those who have already served as volunteers) are urged to review the guidelines and leave their comments and suggestions. Then read the story of one RPCV's journey through medical screening and his suggestions for changes to the process.

The Peace Corps is "fashionable" againThe LA Times says that "the Peace Corps is booming again and "It's hard to know exactly what's behind the resurgence." PCOL Comment: Since the founding of the Peace Corps 45 years ago, Americans have answered Kennedy's call: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Over 182,000 have served. Another 200,000 have applied and been unable to serve because of lack of Congressional funding. The Peace Corps has never gone out of fashion. It's Congress that hasn't been keeping pace.

PCOL readership increases 100%Monthly readership on "Peace Corps Online" has increased in the past twelve months to 350,000 visitors - over eleven thousand every day - a 100% increase since this time last year. Thanks again, RPCVs and Friends of the Peace Corps, for making PCOL your source of information for the Peace Corps community. And thanks for supporting the Peace Corps Library and History of the Peace Corps. Stay tuned, the best is yet to come.

History of the Peace CorpsPCOL is proud to announce that Phase One of the "History of the Peace Corps" is now available online. This installment includes over 5,000 pages of primary source documents from the archives of the Peace Corps including every issue of "Peace Corps News," "Peace Corps Times," "Peace Corps Volunteer," "Action Update," and every annual report of the Peace Corps to Congress since 1961. "Ask Not" is an ongoing project. Read how you can help.

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Story Source: Information Week

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